The airline business today is divided mainly into two catagories of carrier, namely the schedule carriers and charter operators.
Schedule carriers cater for three classes of passenger namely first class, business class and economy class and normally all three together in one aircraft or an alternative mixture of first class and economy class or business and economy class. In contrast charter operators offer single class accommodation and nothing else.
The present invention is concerned mainly with scheduled service operation and the problems of flexibility of use as between the differing class sections of the aircraft. However the invention is not limited thereto and may be applicable to seating used by any category of airline carrier.
In order to maximize profitability the scheduled airline operators arrange the seating in the aircraft cabin based on predicted load factors as between first, business and economy class passengers. The most important of these classes, as far as profitability is concerned, is business class.
Indeed, business class accommodation is recognized by all major carriers as the highest profit earner since it attracts the full fare and is used by those who travel more frequently than others. Hence when planning seating configuration for scheduled operation, airlines seek to maximize the potential for carrying business class passengers. Problems arise however due to the variability of demand. For example, on international flights high demand for business class seats occurs at the start and the end of the working week, with very little intermediate demand. Again low demand for business class seats is encountered during holiday periods, when the demand for economy seats is high.
Moreover, demand for the better class seats varies with route, so that on the New York to London run for example, it is very high, whereas the opposite applies for example on the London to Bombay route.
Although conceivably it would be possible to solve the problem by dedicating aircraft having a particular seating arrangement according to demand on any particular route, logistically this is unworkable.
An alternative possibility would be to increase the business class section of an aircraft to cater for a high demand period on a particular route. However logistics will determine that the same aircraft would have to be used on the same route when the demand for business class seats is low so that a considerable number of seats would remain unfilled with consequent loss of profitability.
The solution adopted by a number of airlines is to provide a medium sized business class section together with the installation of a movable divider. Thus the divider may be deployed when there is a low demand for business class such that some of the business class seats are joined to the economy class section, therefore to be used by passengers travelling on economy fares, which are normally less than half the fare of a business class passenger.
This is clearly unfair and leads to consumer ill feeling. This will be clearly apparent when a comparison is made between the facilities provided in a business class section and an economy section in two main types of aircraft, the B747 and DC10, as follows:
______________________________________ Aircraft Type Economy Business ______________________________________ B747 10 passengers 6/7 passengers across across 3-4-3 2-2-2 2-3-2 32" of space 38" of space DC10 9 passengers 7 passengers across across 3-3-3 2-3-2 32" of space 38" of space ______________________________________
A further disadvantage as regards profitability is the fact that business class passengers tend to migrate into the section aft of the divider because experience tells them that these seats are of the same quality as in the business class section itself. This reduces revenue.
To compensate for these problems there have been a number of convertible seat designs which change configurations from 3-3-3 to 2-2-2. One such design has been operated successfully by a major airline for a number of years but with the rapid advancement in business class seat development it has become too much of a compromise.
This design essentially provides a seat structure whereby the position of the arm dividers may be adjusted such that, for example, a three seater economy configuration may be converted to a two seater configuration by removing the two middle dividers and inserting a business class type arm divider intermediate the two outer arm supports of the seat.
However, the overall structural width of the seat is invariant and it has limited adaptability to other configurations. Moreover, its visual appearance is not good.